Benghazi attack: Ready for a replay Monday night

However, by the last week of September, the White House was no longer pushing the idea that the attack was spontaneous. On Sept. 28, a spokesman for James R. Clapper, director of national intelligence,released a statement saying, “As we learned more about the attack, we revised our initial assessment to reflect new information indicating that it was a deliberate and organized terrorist attack carried out by extremists.” On Oct. 15, Secretary of State Hillary Clintontook responsibility for the security flaws that the terrorist attackers exploited.

In the town hall debate Oct. 16, Romney attempted to profit politically from the furor by accusing Obama of downplaying the true nature of the Benghazi attack for two weeks.

Romney’s gambit backfired when moderator Candy Crowley of CNN backed up Obama’s claim that he first called the Benghazi attack an “act of terror” in a statement on Sept. 12.

Romney supporters were livid. Writer Jim Geraghty of the right-wing National Review said, “Considering how many conservatives thought Libya could be a huge issue in[the] campaign’s final weeks, Romney’s handling is deeply disappointing.”

Another conservative columnist, Charles Krauthammer of The Washington Post, pointed out that Romney has another opportunity to press his case. “Unfortunately for Obama, there is one more debate – [on Monday], entirely on foreign policy. The burning issue will be Libya and the scandalous parade of fictions told by this administration to explain away the debacle,” Krauthammer wrote.

Michael Hanlon, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a nonprofit public policy center based in Washington, and a member of the CIA External Advisory Board, said in an essay posted Oct. 19 on CNN’s website that Obama’s critics should “lay off” the administration’s responses to Benghazi. Hanlon agrees the initial White House view was mistaken.

“But such mistakes will inevitably sometimes happen in a dangerous world where Americans in and out of uniform serve bravely and with full awareness of the dangers before them. We must not turn them into political tempests,” Hanlon said. “To go to a zero-defect and zero-mistake mentality where we only place diplomats within huge fortified compounds, or only deploy them to the field when accompanied by large contingents of armed guards … would not serve American interests.”